


A Lionhearted Boy

by FreezingRayne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-06
Updated: 2011-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:19:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/FreezingRayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Albus Dumbledore gazes into the Mirror of Erised.  He does not see socks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lionhearted Boy

They boy looks remarkably small where he’s sitting, the mirror rising huge and hulking above him, like an enormous door that can never be opened. His hands are pressed to the glass, breath fogging the surface with every exhale.

“So—back again, Harry?”

The boy jumps and wheels around, stumbling to his feet. His eyes are distant and haunted, but he listens as Albus explains the wonders of the Mirrors of Erised. He warns Harry not to look for it again, not to let it consume him—the old man passing wisdom down to the young.

“Sir—Professor Dumbledore?” The boy makes to leave. “Can I ask you something?”

Albus smiles as kindly as he can. He is his ally—the boy must know this. “Obviously, you’ve just done so. You may ask me one more thing, however.”

“What do you see when you look into the mirror?”

It is a simple question, innocently asked, but the images it brings, the memories, the words trembling up from his chest, seeking to burst their way from his lips.

After a moment, he smiles again. “I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.”

He laughs softly to himself, when Harry has gone, at the absurdity of it all. He should leave, take his own advice. The mirror will lead him nowhere good.

Albus steps in front of the gilt-gold frame. He has always been a remarkably weak man.

In the mirror it’s daylight, the sun high and warm above a grey-green sea. The beach is strewn with gleaming white rocks, the largest upon which sits a boy of about twenty.

No, not twenty—nineteen. Albus remembers this day. They’d flown to the seashore, Albus’s old, rickety broom carrying them both.

The boy on the rock is honey blond and pale, skin tinged pink by the sun. His eyes are bright and dancing, and when he smiles it still makes Albus’ heart leap, despite the years and miles separating them, the betrayals and deaths.

Albus puts a hand to the glass. “Oh, Gellert,” he says aloud, though there is no one to hear but himself. Himself, and perhaps Hogwarts. “You were such a fool. Almost as great a fool as I.”

The boy in the mirror turns his face toward the sea, the wind off the waves tousling his hair. He looks content, eyes free of the mania that had grown steadily throughout their time together. Albus had known of it, for a very long while, but he failed to act, and it almost cost him everything.

Love may be able to protect, to defend, to shield an infant boy so he emerges from a death-curse with nothing more than a lightening scar, but Albus has seen love at its worst. Seen it worm its way into a heart and devour it from the inside. Seen it kill.


End file.
